On Galaxy’s Disappointing Day, the League Becomes a Big Winner
If the Galaxy can get over the fact that it happened at their own expense, they might take some solace in knowing they helped Major League Soccer take another step forward Sunday.
The Galaxy came up on the wrong side of a 2-0 score in the MLS Cup against a D.C. United team establishing itself as the league’s premier force.
But the league got lucky, the recipient of perhaps even more good fortune than it deserved for scheduling its championship outside Boston on the third Sunday in November. They were blessed with clear skies and temperatures in the 60s, helping to draw an MLS Cup-record 44,910 fans to Foxboro Stadium.
That’s a nice attendance figure when only a few thousand came up the Eastern seaboard from Washington, and an almost indistinguishable number of fans trekked across the country from Los Angeles.
Soccer coaches aren’t as myopic as their brethren in other sports. They see the big picture.
“It was a nice day, weather-wise,” Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said. “There was a good crowd. It was a good day for MLS.”
It wasn’t a great day, because it wasn’t a great game.
The officiating and the playing surface played too big a role, and key Galaxy players only made a cameo appearance.
It wasn’t a happy day for Los Angeles. This was the last shot at a professional sports championship in the ‘90s. No titles for the Dodgers, the Lakers, the Kings, the Angels, the Mighty Ducks, the Clippers and the ex-teams, the Raiders and Rams.
The latest additions, the Sparks and Galaxy, made late runs for rings this year. Not enough, not in time.
On to the next decade. We need Y2K ASAP.
MLS at least has one need fulfilled: A great team. With Sunday’s victory, D.C. United has won three of the first four MLS Cups.
Here’s to dominance.
“I think dynasty teams are a positive for sport,” MLS Commissioner Don Garber said. “It makes good guys and bad guys. It allows a neutral site like this to have fans that follow a team. Hopefully we’ll continue to have the rest of our teams going after [D.C. United] and shooting for them for Cups to come.”
It’s a good team to emulate. Like high school students dressing the same as the most popular kids, professional sports teams tend to imitate the winners, and D.C. United takes an offensive-minded approach that led the league in scoring this season.
“They’re not afraid to kick the ball 60 yards up the field,” Schmid said.
Of course, not every team has a scorer like Roy Lassiter and a passing whiz like Marco Etcheverry.
Etcheverry didn’t have a point Sunday, but he gave D.C. United several good scoring opportunities with his corner kicks and free shots.
Lassiter set up the first goal with a point-blank shot that was blocked by Galaxy goalkeeper Kevin Hartman. Lassiter got his foot on the rebound, deflecting the ball to Jaime Moreno, whose shot got past Hartman.
Lassiter also changed the tone of the game in the seventh minute when he shoved Galaxy captain Robin Fraser from behind when the two were chasing down a long pass. Fraser crashed to the ground and broke his left collarbone.
The referees did not call a foul. They also remained silent later in the first half, when Cobi Jones beat John Maessner to the box and Maessner tripped him from behind.
In each case, the Galaxy had a legitimate complaint.
Both teams complained about the field, which was hard and still chewed up in spots from the Patriot-Jet NFL game six days earlier. The field didn’t cause Hartman to make his bad decision when he tried to play a ball kicked back to him by teammate Steve Jolley, but it did affect his footing when he mis-hit the ball and D.C. United’s Ben Olsen swooped in for a free shot into an empty net.
That effectively ended the game, but it doesn’t have to be the end of a rivalry. The Galaxy lost to D.C. United on a rainy day at Foxboro Stadium in the inaugural MLS Cup three years ago, and is the closest thing D.C. United has to a rival.
“Maybe it will become a rivalry when we win one,” Fraser said.
With each passing championship, the league gains legitimacy and adds a little bit of tradition.
If the league can grow in stature by the time the Galaxy is ready to win, it will mean more to the greater Los Angeles population.
In the meantime the Galaxy will enter the 2000 season as the defending conference champions, which is the nicest thing that’s been said about an L.A. team in quite a while.
J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com
